304 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ Septembar 30, 1686 
purpose. Close by is a tract of land of the same character, in which are 
good crops of Potatoes, and Broad Beans 4 to 5 feet high. I think there 
can be no doubt but that the shale from the coal and iron pits possesses 
some fertilising properties, and retains moisture to a considerable degree. 
Bilston cemetery is entirely on a pit mound, for when I called the grave¬ 
diggers were at work at a grave close by the side of the grave in 
which rest the remains of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Prosser, the well- 
known writer of many contributions to the “ Sunday at Home,” and 
other magazines. Not only to thje bottom of the grave, but deeper 
still, nothing is found but dry slaty shale, and one wonders to see 
trees and shrubs growing as they do in this country. Sycamore, 
Black Italian and Lombardy Poplars, Wych Elms, Mountain Ash, 
Laburnums, common Ash, and Lilacs do well here, and it is one of 
the last districts in which I should look for good growing examples of 
the Lombardy Poplar. Holes were made and filled with sail in which 
the trees were planted, but the roots have got beyond now, and seem to be 
at home in the shale and any soil that may get washed into it. 
Many instances of successfully cultivated garden plots could be men¬ 
tioned, especially when the natural soil exists from broken-up pasturage, 
but such pasturage is not now plentiful. When the iron trade was 
flourishing, and the coal trade consequently so, the output from the pits 
was incessant, and thousands of acres of what formerly was pleasant 
well-cultivated arable land became a wilderness of waste land, from 
which the pleasant face of Nature’s handiwork was blotted out. I have 
aimed more at showing what can be done under great difficulties and 
with very unprepossessing soils, and what has been done in making 
gardening land out of pit-mounds. In these days it is highly essential 
that a taste for gardening should be fostered among the working classes 
of the great manufacturing districts as an essential corrective of the very 
terrible evil so common in every district nowadays. Betting is the great 
curse of the Black Country, and no pursuit of an outdoor character 
except gardening seems to be free from it. 
One more example of a Bilston garden and I have done with the sub¬ 
ject. There is a nice villa recently built on a pit-mound side, and two 
years since what is now a multum in par wo garden was a mass of shale. 
It is the property and in the occupation of Mr. James Bird, one of the 
Bilston Township Commissioners, and the garden is a success. A vinery 
and other glass structures are there, in which some very fine Coleus and 
other plants are grown. Chrysanthemums in pots are most promising, 
and the outdoor crops, consisting chiefly of Celery, Peas, capital Carrots, 
Roses doing well, excellent Dahlias, Stocks, and Asters, good Lord 
Suffield Apples, Strawberries, and other things ; but much ha9 been 
done to assist the shale by the admixture of good soil and manure 
and thoughtful supervision.—W. Dean. 
THE PAST HISTORY OF EXISTING PLANTS. 
A n address read before the British Association by William Carrnthers, President L.S. 
F.R.S., F.G.S.] 
In detaining you a few minutes from the proper work of the section, I 
propose to ask your attention to what is known of the past history of the 
species of plants which still form a portion of the existing flora. The 
relation of our existing vegetation to preceding floras is beyond the scope os 
our present inquiry : it has been frequently made the subject of exposition, 
but to handle it requires a more lively imagination than I can lay claim to, 
or, perhaps, than it is desirable to employ in any strictly scientific investi¬ 
gation. 
The literature of science is of little, if any, value in tracing the history of 
species, and in determining the modification or the persistency of characters 
which may be essential or accidental to them. If help could be obtained 
from this quarter botanical inquiry would be specially favoured, for the 
literature of botany is earlier, and its terms have all along been more exact 
than in any of her sister sciences. But even the latest descriptions, in¬ 
corporating as they do the most advanced observations of science, and ex¬ 
pressed in the most exact terminology, fail to supply the data on which a 
minute comparison of plants can be instituted. Any attempt to compare 
the descriptions of Linmeus and the earlier systematists who, under his in¬ 
fluence, introduced greater precision into their language, with the standard 
au fbo ra our da y> w °uld be of no value. The short, vague, and in¬ 
sufficient descriptions of the still earlier botanists cannot even be taken into 
consideration. 
Greater precision might be expected from the illustrations that have 
been in use in botanical literature from the earliest times ; but these really 
supply no better help in the minute study of species than the descriptions 
which they are intended to aid. The earliest illustrations are extremely 
rude : many of them are misplaced ; some are made to do duty for several 
species, and not a few are purely fictitious. The careful and minute exact 
illustrations which are to be found in many modern systematic works are 
too recent to supply materials for detecting any changes that may have 
taken place in the elements of a flora. 
But the means of comparison which we look for in vain in the published 
literature of science may be found in the collections of dried plants which 
botanists have formed for several generations. The local herbaria of our 
own day represent not only the different species found in a country, but the 
various forms which occur, together with their distribution. They must 
supply the most certain materials for the minute comparison at any future 
epoch of the then existing vegetation with that of our own day. 
The preservation of dried plants as a help in the study of systematic 
botany was first employed in the middle of the sixteenth century. The 
earliest herbarium of which we have any record is that of John Falconer, an 
Enghshman who travelled in Italy between 1540 and 1547, and who brought 
with him to England a collection of dried plants fastened in a book. 
This was Been by William Turner, our first British botanist, who refers 
to it in his “ Herbal.” published in 1551. Turner may have been already 
acquainted with this method of preserving plants, for in his enforced 
absence from England he studied at Bologna under Luca Ghini, the first 
professor of botany in Europe, who, there is reason to believe, originated 
the practice of making herbaria. Ghini’s pupils, Aldrovandus and Caes- 
alpinus, formed extensive collections. Caspar Bauhin, whose “ Prodromus ” 
was the first attempt to digest the literature of botany, left a considerable 
herbarium, still preserved at Basle. No collection of English plants is 
known to exist older than the middle of the seventeenth century; a 
volume containing some British and many exotic plants collected in the 
year 1647 was Borne years ago acquired by the British Museum. Towards 
the end of that century great activity was manifested in the collection of 
plants, not only in our own country, but in every district of the globe 
visited by travellers. The labours of Ray and Sloane, of Petiver and 
Plukenet are manifest not only in the works which they published, but in 
the collections that they made, which were purchased by the country in 
1759 when the museum of Sir Hans Sloane became the nucleus of the now 
extensive collections of the British Museum. The most important of these 
collections in regard to British plants is the herbarium of Adam Buddie, 
collected nearly 200 years ago, and containing an extensive series, which 
formed the basis of a British flora, that, unhappily for science, was never 
published, though it still exists in manuscript. Other collections of British 
plants of the same age, but less complete, supplement those of Buddie : 
these various materials are in such a state of preservation as to permit of 
the most careful comparison with living plants, and they show that the two 
centuries which have elapsed since their collection have not modified in any 
particular the species contained in them. The early collectors contemplated 
merely the preservation of a single specimen of each species ; consequently 
the data for an exhaustive comparison of the indigenous flora of Britain at 
the beginning of last century with that of the present are very imperfect as 
compared with those which we shall hand down to our successors for their 
use. 
The collections made in other regions of the world in the seventeenth 
century, and included in the extensive herbarium of Sir Hans Sloane, are fre¬ 
quently being examined side by side with plants of our own day, but they do 
not show any peculiarities that distinguish them from recent collections. If 
any changes are taking place in plants, it is certain that the 300 years 
during which their dried remains have been preserved in herbaria have been 
too short to exhibit them. 
Beyond the time of those early herbaria the materials which we owe in 
any way to the intervention of man have been preserved without any regard 
to their scientific interest. They consist mainly of materials used in build¬ 
ing or for sepulture. The woods employed in medifeval buildings present no 
peculiarities by which they can be distinguished from existing woods 
neither do the woods met with in Roman and British villages and burying 
places. From a large series collected by General Pitt-Rivers in extensive 
explorations carried on by him on the site of a village which had been 
occupied by the British before and after the appearance of the Romans, we 
find that the woods chiefly used by them were Oak, Birch, Hazel, and 
Willow, and at the latter period of occupation of the village the wood of the 
Spanish Chestnut (Castanea vulgaris, Lctmk.) was so extensively employed 
that it must have been introduced and grown in the district, The gravel 
beds in the north of London, explored by Mr. W. G. Smith for the 
palaeolithic implements in them, contained also fragments of Willow and 
Birch, and the rhizomes of Osmunda regaliB, L. 
The most important materials, however, for the comparison of former 
vegetation of a known age with that of our own day have been supplied 
by the specimens which have been obtained from the tombs of the ancient 
Egyptians. Until recently these consisted mainly of fruits and seeds. 
These were all more or less carbonised, because the former rifling of the 
tombs had exposed them to the air. Ehrenberg, who accompanied Yon 
Minutoli in his Egyptian expedition, determined the seeds which he had 
collected ; but as he himself doubted the antiquity of some of the materials 
on which he reported, the scientific value of his enumeration is destroyed. 
Passalacqua in 1823 made considerable collections from tombs at Thebes, 
and these were carefully examined and described by the distinguished 
botanist Kunth. He pointed out, in a paper published sixty years ago, that 
these ancient seeds possessed the minute and apparent accidental pecu¬ 
liarities of their existing representatives. Unger, who visited Egypt, 
published in several papers identifications of the plant remains from the 
tombs; and one of the latest labours of Alexander Braun was an examina¬ 
tion of the vegetable remains in the Egyptian Museum at Berlin, which 
was published after his death from his manuscript, under the carefu 
editorship of Ascherson and Magnus. In this twenty-four species wer«I 
determined, some from imperfect materials, and necessarily with some 
hesitation as to the accuracy of their determination. 
The recent exploration of unopened tombs belonging to an early 
period in the history of the Egyptian people has permitted the examina¬ 
tion of the plants in a condition which could not have been anticipated. And 
happily the examination of these materials has been made by a botanist who 
is thoroughly acquainted with the existing flora of Egypt, for Dr. Schwein- 
forth has for a quarter of a century been exploring the plants of the Nile 
valley. The plant-remains were included within the mummy-wrappings, and, 
being thus hermetically sealed, have been preserved with scarcely any 
change. By placing the plants in warm water, Dr. Schweinfurth has suc¬ 
ceeded in preparing a series of specimens gathered 4000 years ago, which 
are as satisfactory for the purposes of science as any collected at the 
present day. These specimens consequently supply means for the closest 
examination and comparison with their living representatives. The 
colours of the flowers are still present, even the most evanescent, such 
as the violet of the Larkspur and Knapweed, and the scarlet of the 
Poppy; the chlorophyll remains in the leaves, and the sugar in the pulp of 
the Raisins. Dr. Schweinfurth has determined no less than fifty-nine 
species, some of which are represented by the fruits employed as offerings 
to the dead, others by the flowers and leaves made into garlands, and the 
remainder by branches on which the body was placed, and which were 
inclosed within the wrappings. 
[The following is a list of the species of anci nt Egyptian plants deter¬ 
mined by Dr. Schweinfurth. I am indebted to Dr. Schweinfurth for some 
species in this list, the discovery of which he has not yet published 
Delphinium orientale, Gay; Cocculus Laeba, DC.; Nymphma coerulea ,Sav.; 
Nymphcea Lotus, Hook; Papaver Rhseas, L .; Sinapis arvensis, L.; var. 
